Vegeance - Second Lowest PPV Buyrate Ever

[The_Sharpshooter]

I buy 2-4 WWE PPVs a year. I'm pretty much guaranteed to get Royal Rumble(best concept in wrestling) and MITB(2 ladder matches AND 2 world title matches? I'm in. Plus the CM Punk show was something to see live). Wrestlemania is a toss up. I live in ATL and didn't buy a ticket or PPV, because with the Rock "hosting", I figured it to be more pageantry than wrestling. Survivor Series used to be my favorite PPV, mostly because I'm a scorpio, but also because the 4 on 4 or 5 on 5 matches were always something stellar.

Other than those, it takes a LOT for me to even consider buying another PPV. I don't have many friends interested in wrestling, so I'm shelling out 200 myself if I get these. I haven't been enticed to buy PPVs enough, and most that I get excited for are the "Brand name" PPVs.

But I don't want them to cut down on PPVs at all. I work Sunday Nights and I like to check into Wrestlezone to see the results. I've become accustomed to ignoring the PPVs until 11 PM just as WWE needs to become accustomed of their fans only being excited about their product half the time. You want better buys? PUT OUT A BETTER PRODUCT!

 

[Hulk Hogan's Brother]

The shows leading upto Vengeance were not all that interesting. The "walkout" angle was very well set up but it had a rather tame and rather confusing conclusion. Triple H remained the COO of the company but lost control of Raw. The Punk/ HHH coalation seemed rather forced and Lauranitis was a pretty bad as the GM. Alberto was also not getting enough heat as a champion. Henry vs Show was well built up but Big Show is realy uninteresting to a lot of fans. He has been round forever but done very little.

The other factor is The Rock. It had been announced much in advance that Rock was going to wrestle at Survivor Series. Wrestling fans were probably saving money up for that event and so they decided to give Vengeance a miss. I would say that had it not been for The Rock coming back at Survivor Series, a few more people would have bought the show.

I am not saying that the number of PPV's is not a problem. It most certainly is a factor but when you combine it with rather insipid and rushed booking, the problem becomes more apparent. Or maybe you could say that the number of PPV's leads to the bland booking.

 

[Rckstrtmmy]

I don't think you need a lot of business sense to know you're not going to waste your money on something... and when mass quantities of people make the same decision, it kinda adds up.

Sure, they pulled in 5 mill... but did you know, Mr. Businesssense, that there's such a thing as overhead costs? For example, holding a show in an arena is not free. Believe it or not, they get a cut of the money that the PPV rakes in. Thought all your favorite WWE superstars were working Pro Bono? SPOILER ALERT they don't. You also have to shell out money for the slot on PPV, for security, vendors, pyro etc etc. 5 million dollars doesn't go quite as far as you think it does.

I realize there are overhead costs genius, but it only costs about 400,000 to rent out Madison Square Garden. I'd imagine most arenas are similiar to that if not less. Add the fact that they use so much damn pyro, there's no way they don't have a deal set up with the manufacturers. Plus fireworks aren't THAT expensive so they prolly spend 40-50k on them per show. The wrestler's salaries are a fixed cost so that's prolly already taken care of regardless of what the show does. Security comes with renting out the arena plus the WWE has it's own security so that's another fixed cost. Vendors don't cost that much, they just get a % of how much merchandise their booth sells. Food and drinks and stuff are an arena cost, not the WWE's. I don't know how much it costs for a PPV slot but if TNA can afford to throw one out there with only 10,000 buys every month it can't cost all that much.

5 million dollars from a show that they barely built up? Even if the show only made a million in profits, it's more than worth it for the WWE to put out as many PPV's as possible.

 

[rokuma]

I mean...I don't know how to respond to this. The second lowest EVER? Even back in 1995/1996 when there were very few "big matchups" and few stars? That's sad. I guess the era's are similar, but I still can't believe a HHH/Punk vs Awesome Truth main event couldn't pull in more buys than some of the junk they had back then (See. Mercy, Waylen)

 

[Big Nick Dudley]

This is a pointless conversation. If Vince feels he's losing money doing too many PPV's, he'll stop. It's really that simple.

Basically, he knows more than we do. He knows what they cost to produce against how much they need to bring in to make money. We don't know those figures. Until we have those figures, our opinion really means nothing.

Do I personally like this number of PPV's? No. I'd rather they went to six or eight per year, but that's just my opinion. Again, that's my personal preference as it relates to what I like in my wrestling shows. If he's making money, even with "low" buyrates, he's not going to change anything, nor should he.

 

[King Patrick Star]

I think the low PPV numbers have everything to do with it being the 2nd PPV in October. With Hell In A Cell at the beginning of the month, Vengeance at the end of the month, and Bound For Glory right in the middle, this was ultimately bound to happen. I think the WWE tried to take some PPV buys away from TNA, which obviously didn’t work, but it was a good effort. I wonder what the numbers are for the whole month of October for the WWE. If we were to take the total and divide it by two, would that number be higher than Bound For Glory?? If so, then I think having two is sort of justified. Doubt it, but who really cares??

 

[reynolsg]

Just for anybody saying that WWE made over 5 million dollars on the PPV sales - they only take about 50% of the revenue while the PPV carrier keeps the rest.

Also, outside the US, the price of the PPV is much lower - for instance, in the UK it is 15 pounds sterling and in Ireland it is 22 euros.

So, taking all that into account, it's actually about 4 million overall and then they only take about half of that, so their take is 2 million, give or take. Nothing to snot at but once you've paid everyone their PPV bonuses, it's not all that much.

 

[Poop Master Flex]

This isn't a shocker at all. There was little to no build for the PPV, if you only have 2 weeks to build a PPV then the buyrates aren't going to be that great, its hard to get excited for a PPV that feels like it was thrown together and nothing was built. The main event of the evening were with 2 guys who just a week before were kayfabe fired and just showed up on TV 6 days before the event.

Pretty much everything going into that PPV had little to no build so it was hard to get excited for it. Although the matches were good there was really no reason to see any of the matches, little story was put into any of them and without story there is no emotional investment. It's not enough to have a good match, its got to be a good match people want to see and Vengeance had none of that.

 

[XXJJ]

CM Punk isnt a big enough draw that he will increase buyrates and ratings etc. The raw ratings actually went down after his shoot promo. Summerslam buyrates were down. What he has is a very die hard vocal fanbase.

The big angle that they were promoting was the whole conspiracy Punk/HHH angle. Cena/Del Rio were on the backburner. The only reason they went on last was because Henry/Show were going to break the ring. And no one is going to pay 50 dollars because they want to watch Henry wrestle the Big Show.

I think the issue why the buyrates for Vengeance are so low because NOC, HITC and Vengeance were all clustered together. Most people are not going to spend 50 dollars per ppv in that short of a time span. The same thing happened with Extreme Rules and Over the limit. ER did very well, but OTL was only a couple of weeks after and didn't do that well.

But as long as they are making money from their "B" ppv's.. I dont see them cutting down on pay per views.

 

[Da Prophet]

Not surprising at all to see this. They had three PPV events just weeks after each other and Vengeance wasn't a must see. I didn't order the PPV because I knew that the matches had no purpose. The title matches were easy to pick, the tag match had no stipulation so you didn't need to see it and overall the PPV just wasn't needed. I hope the WWE get the message and drop either Hell in a Cell or Vengeance. If they do that it will give them more time to build angles and draw more buys for the event.

 

[Mustang Sally]

[QUOTE="Hollywood" Prophet;3558402]Not surprising at all to see this. They had three PPV events just weeks after each other and Vengeance wasn't a must see.[/QUOTE]

Plus, wasn't Game 4 of the World Series that day? Another reason to not watch the PPV.

Face it; WWE has over-saturated the market and I'm frankly surprised the PPV viewership has held up as well as it has, especially in times of a down economy. But remember that we used to have just a one-hour RAW (from the Manhattan Center!) and that's all the original programming WWE showed in a week. When they were filling Tuesday nights, we had five hours a week of this stuff. It's too much product.

Back when Raw ran one hour, we also had just 5 pay-per-views a year. It was the "In Your House" project that turned the PPV schedule to what it is today. The original price of those were $9.95, then $14.95, which is a far cry from the $45 they want today. And they're wondering what happened to PPV viewership?

Personally, I order very view PPVs at those prices......and you can be sure that Vengeance wasn't one of 'em.

 

[Dagger Dias]

This is a chance for WWE to finally wake up and realize how stupid it is of them to have two or three PPV's in the same month. Vengeance was a weak card with nothing that made people want to buy it. They did not need this show. WWE would be better off doing only one PPV per month and if they had used the time they wasted in building up for Vengeance in only two weeks, to build up Hell In a Cell instead, then that show would have had twice as long of a timeframe to generate interest.

This is a simple Marketing principle, guys. People WILL NOT care if you do not give them a reason to purchase your product. WWE did not do that with Vengeance. They should leave Hell In a Cell as the only PPV event in October. That will produce stronger buys for next year. Just get rid of Vengeance entirely.